


A Room of One's Own

by twistedchick



Category: The Mask of Apollo - Mary Renault
Genre: Ancient Greece, Multi, Philosophy, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 23:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2751548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nikeratos returns from Syracuse after the riots to find that he has choices to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Room of One's Own

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



"Canst thou see help, or refuge anywhere?" – Euripides, "The Trojan Women"

It took longer than I expected to make my way back to Athens, by way of Delos. Some might think the journey was the god's gift to me, in compensation for the shipwreck before, but I hesitated to accept that as the reason. Some god was at work, doubtless, but what is a gift to a god is not always easy for men to discern.

I took my time on the walk uphill, carrying only necessities; I had hired a boy with a donkey to carry the luggage to the house, and it would be there before I was. The most direct route to our house was through the city but I took my time, reacquainting myself with it. It felt as if I had been away too long.

In a street adjacent to the theatre, a boy ran out in front of me. "Please, sir, are you Nikeratos the actor?"

"Yes," I said, wondering what was up. The boy was well dressed and groomed like a racehorse, clearly from a wealthy house, but it is not the custom of either boys' houses or women's houses to seek out whoever walks past.

"Chrysanthe of Crete wishes to speak with you for a moment, sir, if you would follow me." He dropped a token into my hand. It was one of the glazed pottery chips given out at the house of Chrysanthe of Crete, the hetaira. Her receptions during the festivals were memorable – but the gaming chips from her parties were not customarily handed out in the street. Chrysanthe had wealthy patrons; she had no need of random visitors.

I was carrying the mask in its box with me, in the bag over my shoulder; I never trusted it to anyone else's care any more. But it was as if I felt a nudge from behind my shoulder, and I sensed a presence behind the hidden face. _Look around._ The hidden voice whose leadings I had followed for so long spoke in my mind. _Take heed._

I followed the boy through the doorway into an airy reception room, where he showed me to the guest chair and washed my feet, and then rose and went to get his mistress.

"Thank the gods that you have come. I have had Ianos checking the docks for word of you every time a ship came in for weeks." Chrysanthe poured a cup of wine and handed it to me. It was a good sweet evening wine, not much watered, which told me the matter was serious. I tipped a few drops in libation before her household deities and drank, and she did the same. Then, the formalities finished, she dismissed the servant and walked with me to the private garden in back, where a boy and a girl were talking under the shade of a small arbor.

No, not a boy.

Axiothea still wore men's clothing, but she was no longer as bone-thin as she had been. Her face had filled out, and so had her body. She had not put on much weight in the way of women when pregnant, but one learns as an actor to notice the ways in which people carry their bodies, and to me it was clear. When she looked up from her conversation and saw me, a roiling cloud of emotions and thoughts crossed her face.

"Niko."

The girl she had been speaking with stood, nodded to me and left us together. I sat on the bench, not too near her; she looked like a doe in the hills who is not sure whether the shadow it sees is another deer or a wolf. 

"Axiothea, my dear." Now the ungovernable delays of the trip were clear, the hand of a god. One hesitated to guess which one of the brothers had had this in his care. "This is not where I would expect to find you."

A red flush washed over her face and vanished as she shook her head fiercely. "I have not taken up the trade; this is sanctuary." She had hidden her condition as long as possible, but it had become impossible to remain at the Academy, and her landlady had thrown her out. She knew she could not go home; her father had died of the flux, and the house had gone to a cousin who did not approve of her. She had tried to seek refuge at a temple, but found none open to a pregnant woman dressed as a man. She had gone to see Plato, who had called for Speusippos, who knew everyone everywhere, and they had brought her to the house of Chrysanthe in the dark of night, dodging the city patrol, to avoid the crowds. There had been enough murmuring outside the Academy at the sight of her, as she walked there, to fear that a crowd would call for her death for impiety. The ignorant would assume that the gods would be offended at her situation and condition – the same gods for whom I wore the clothing of women and goddesses as well as men and gods as I served them in the theatre.

"No one would think to look for me here." Her voice held shades of both fear and defiance. "I was waiting to see you. What do you want to do?"

I was not at all sure that this decision was mine, but she had no other man in her life as guardian at this point, unless it be Speusippos or Plato, and I was certainly the only one who had been with her. 

"You are well here?"

She nodded. "Yes, of course. They are kind to me. I help with what I can during the day, and stay out of the way in the evening, when they are entertaining. And I am teaching philosophy, a little. It helps me, to keep my mind on something useful." And a whisper: "I miss Lasthenia."

Of course. The Academy's only other woman student could not visit a hetaira's house, not without more problems arising. However, they had managed to arrange to have one of the servants carry books back and forth to her. Chrysanthe had a small library of her own, mostly plays, so that she could converse sensibly with anyone she met; there was enough to give Axiothia something to think about besides her situation.

I took her hand, which she allowed. "You know me; you know Thettalos. Marriage is not in the picture for us, even if your father were still living."

"I understand." Her voice was small. "But I felt you should know."

"Let me think and see what I can come up with."

"They are very kind to me here." Her voice was quiet. "They understand the dangers. But this is not a life I want to live." She looked across at me, her eyes level. I have faced oligarchs who had less strength in their stare. "My room has a door that bolts shut, for safety. I have never needed that before." Her hand crept, reluctantly, it seemed, to her belly. "I hate feeling helpless."

She still had a man's soul, whatever her body was up to.

"Take heart, my dear. This is something that neither of us has sought; it is from the gods. Dionysus and Apollo together will show a way."

* * *

Thettalos was not at home when I arrived, but he showed up halfway through the meal of olives, cheese and bread that the housekeeper, Ianthe, put together for me.

I was eating in the shade of the olive tree, by the back of the house, having first put the mask in its shrine and poured a libation for it. The eyeholes were shadowed, as if the face were in deep thought, but it could be seen from where I sat. I had the sense that it might be reserving judgment for the moment.

I heard the quick footsteps and then felt myself wrapped in Thettalos's embrace. 

"Thank the gods you are home safely." He held me at arms' length and looked me over, as he always did. "You are healthy, you are here, you are…" he paused for a beat. "Something is going on."

I stood to return the embrace, never mind dinner gone to the ground. "You could say that. I have some decisions to make."

"You are not giving up the theater, are you? Or me?" His lifted eyebrows made a mockery of the questions. The slanting light of evening sparked flame in his hair.

"You know better than that, my dear."

"Then it cannot be that serious." He looked at my face again. "I'm wrong. It's that serious. You aren't ill, are you? I would have heard if a festival had been canceled or a theater razed."

I leaned down to pick up the olives and cheese and put them back in the tipped bowl and he went to his knees to help. Having done so, he sat at my feet, leaning against my knees. "Tell me?"

So I told him the whole thing – Axiothea's unexpected arrival in Syracuse, our waking to hear the city under attack from within, the riots, our use of the theater equipment to frighten off the fighters, and the aftermath.

Thettalos sat thoughtfully. "How much is a house?"

"A house?"

"How much to build one here? Or another room or two?"

"I could manage it, if it were small." 

"I would pay half," he said, as if it made no difference.

I choked on an olive and coughed out the pit. "Are you sure?"

Thettalos wrapped his arms around my legs and leaned against my knees. He paused a moment – in anyone else I would consider it an overly theatrical gesture, but with him I knew it was truly thoughtfulness. "Niko, this may be the only son you're going to have. Don't you want to pass on your knowledge of acting? You're the wisest actor I know – no, don't protest, I've played with all of them now."

"I thought I was passing it on to you." 

He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. "You know it is not the same. You've told me about playing Astynax and growing up in the roles from childhood, with your father's guidance. If I had had that, instead of waiting for so long, how much better I would be!"

I ran my fingers through his hair, feeling the soft warm waves, a talisman of my happiness. "You know how good you are. You do not need to beg compliments."

Thettalos made a rude face. "Don't change the subject. Or do you think that she would not be someone you—or we—could live with?"

"If she had her own house, over there, perhaps, or her own room, she need not live with us that much unless she wished. " I surveyed the fields, the garden – it needed a bit of weeding, but they always do. It was certainly large enough to support a couple more people, without overburdening Phelix, the gardener.

Thettalos's smile widened into a grin. "You have said, more than once, that I could use a little more exposure to philosophy."

"Only when you misplace your lamp for the third time in as many days."

* * *

Both of us went to Chrysanthe's house the next day. The sky was spitting rain, the sort of squalls that arise as the season turns toward winter; I was grateful, looking at the clouds, that the ship that had carried me from Syracuse had sailed when it did, for the sea looked like a half-hammered sword lying by the forge, all irregular dents, angles and edges. We had brought a small cask of the cured olives from the farm as a gift, and Chrysanthe said it would be the highlight of the day's dinner for herself and the others who lived there; they were too good to be given to the patrons. She showed us to her own library, where Axiothea lay on a couch with an open scroll. She started to rise but I shook my head and sat on the adjacent couch with Thettalos.

"You have decided something," Axiothea said, reading our faces. "May I know what it is?" Her composure was firm, as if it did not matter.

Thettalos and I had talked half the night, after our reunion festivities, about what we could do, but the decision would be hers. He glanced at me – I was wishing someone had written lines for me – and took the lead.

"We would like you to come and live with us – as a guest, as a friend, with your own rooms, your independence," he said.

This was apparently not what she had expected. "Live … with you?"

"We will build rooms onto the house for you, or a separate small house, and you could stay there until the child is born, or later, or as long as you want." I thought about her life in the Academy. "Your space would be your own." It was difficult to choose the words she would accept. "It's peaceful. You could write, or have people over to teach and discuss the nature of the One."

She blinked and looked aside, thinking hard. It was not hard to imagine her thoughts. In a few years she had gone from being the daughter of a respectable working man to the unthinkable – a woman, dressed as a man, living the life of inquiry that only men were allowed. And now she had, through no fault of her own, arrived in the situation that gossips and ill-wishers would assume was the result of her independence and choices, putting her further outside the realm of respectability. And those who mistrusted women or considered women's thinking a frightening thing would always be a danger to a woman alone.

I had considered this. "If you agreed, I would become your guardian, or Thettalos in my place, if only to keep overly pious people from causing trouble. Both Thettalos and I will still travel for the festivals. We can find someone to stay there with you when we are on the road, if you wish. Someone you trust from the Academy, for instance. Speusippos would know of someone, I'm sure." I paused, watching her face. 

Axiothea rolled up the scroll with shaking hands, fastened it and put it aside on a table.  
"This is as unconventional as I am." She looked each of us in the face. "What if it does not work out?"

"My friend," I said, "if you want an entirely separate house, you may have one; I have a bit put aside. A small house or a room or two, neither will keep us from eating. But I thought you might like the company." She was one who needed thoughtful people around her, I knew, else she would never have gone to the Academy.

"And the child?"

"Ours. All of ours. If you will allow it," Thettalos said quickly. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at the floor then at her. "I think if it is a son, Niko should have another actor in the family, someone to teach all the things he should know as he was taught by his father. And if it is a daughter… I have missed having a little sister, since my own sister died."

In fairness, I had to speak as well. "And if you decide to go back to the Academy and have nothing to do with the child, or us, we will find someone to take care of it. It will not be neglected, boy or girl." I added, slowly, to make sure she understood, "It is up to you."

Axiothea drew a long deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes shut. When she opened them again, her face had softened. "Yes. Thank you. Thank you both."

* * *

The divine brothers must have had the contractor in their hand, for the small house, separate but adjacent to our own and with a connecting door , was built within a month of good stone and whitewash, and furnished as well, with a bed, some chairs, a writing table and anything else a woman might need that a man might not think of. Much of the latter came from Chrysanthe and her women, who had come to care about Axiothea during her time there. They had also put together whatever things a child might need – about which I know less than nothing, not having had younger siblings, but Thettalos said it was good – and offered to send a midwife when her time came.

We brought Axiothea home with us just before dawn one autumn morning, when the air felt crisp and the sky was clear, fading from stars overhead to the first touches of sunlight on the leaves and branches of the olive trees as we walked. She wore a woman's heavy veil until she was outside the city, then let it slip down to her shoulders but wrapped it around herself for warmth. Thettalos asked her questions about something he'd read in one of Plato's dialogues, and this kept her busy until we crested the hill and started down the path toward the house. 

I had told Ianthe and Phelix what was happening, of course: this was a friend of the family, a guest, and she should be treated with all kindness. They came out to meet her and be introduced, and Ianthe went immediately to make up some of her hot fruit drink that was better than anything else on a cold crisp morning.

It was not something I had planned – Apollo Helios had done it, with a sunbeam in the right place – but as Axiothea walked into the house she saw the shrine first thing, and went to pay her respects. I saw the moment when her face changed. The mask's eyes were open, the presence clear and welcoming, the message plain: Be welcome, in your own place, for this is the god's working, not your own. You are loved.

She bowed before the shrine, and said not a word until we had shown her to her own rooms, with her things in them, and the mark on the door frame where a bolt could be installed, should she wish it. She touched the wax tablets and stylus on the desk, and nodded as if to herself. Then she rubbed the mark off the door frame and walked outside to look over the garden and the field, and down to the river.

"I think I can be happy here," she whispered. "I think anyone could."

* * *

Axiothea of Athens (born c. 350 BCE – ) -- Founder of the first school of philosophy attended by women, author of the dialogues, _Phoebe_ , _Basilea_ and _Chloe_ , the plays _Helen at Troy_ , _Athene_ , _Artemis and Kallisto_ and _Hestia_ , and the books _The Citadel_ and _The Border_. Her writing stressed the right of women to seek to know the nature of truth through philosophical study. Among her known students were Chloe of Lyceum, her daughter, who with Kalliope of Corinth wrote her biography. Only fragments of her works survived purges by both Athenian officials and later Christian ecclesiastical authorities.  
\-- Encyclopedia of Women Philosophers, 3rd Edition, Oxbridge University Press, London, 2020.

 _…Then, Chloe, shall we agree that the souls of women seek truth even as do those of men? …We are born to live or die equal in soul, though unequal in life. The gods speak to all, regardless of the shape of our bodies. In our souls we are free..._  
\-- from _Chloe_ , tr. Joan Shakespeare, 1569-1646

**Author's Note:**

> Thettalos and Axiothea are historical; Nikeratos is not, unfortunately.
> 
> Joan Shakespeare was William's sister, to whom he left his house in Stratford. 
> 
> In the time in which this book was set, women were chattel property. Men had charge of them from birth to death; even hetairas, cultured and educated women who served a function in society similar to geishas in Japan, had to have powerful or wealthy protectors. People who offended society's rules could be considered to be offending the gods -- for which the penalty was death, by stoning or being thrown off a high rock -- because if the gods were offended they might remove their favor from the city, and allow it to be overcome by the next invading army, which would kill the men of fighting age, rape the women, castrate the young boys and take any survivors away to sell into slavery. 
> 
> Thanks be to wyomingnot and zlabya for beta reading.


End file.
